Paper Thin
by ncfan
Summary: -Percy x Penelope- He felt as thin as paper, incapable of anything and utterly useless.


**Characters**: Percy, Penelope, others mentioned**  
Summary**: He felt as thin as paper, incapable of anything and utterly useless.**  
Pairings**: Percy x Penelope**  
Author's Note**: Just an exploration of Percy's reaction to Penelope being Petrified. Also, with the IV, just assume that it is an IV modified to suit Wizarding purposes (I can't help but think that St. Mungo's has magical IV units). Finally, George's quote was taken from chapter fourteen of _Chamber of Secrets. _Please tell me what you think.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own _Harry Potter_.

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Her face was so cold when he reached out to touch her cheek that Percy could scarcely believe Madam Pomfrey when she said that Penelope was Petrified, and not kissed by Death and held by His hand.

"Petrification is like a long sleep," Madam Pomfrey asserted firmly. "Those Petrified feel no pain and have no conception of time lost." All this was being said as she was setting up an IV unit next to the Ravenclaw Prefect's bed. "To them, it is as though they've just had a long nap. That's all." When she was done with the IV (_Percy winced and gritted his teeth at the sound of a needle slipping into hard, rigid flesh, thinking that, somewhere, Penelope's mind must surely be registering pain)_ and had Penelope hooked up to it Madam Pomfrey, with uncharacteristic gentleness, patted Percy's shoulder and told him that he had fifteen minutes.

_But death is like a long sleep too_, Percy wanted to protest, reaching out to touch curly hair—_God_, even her hair was stiff. _The longest sleep of all…_

It would have been interesting to see what Madam Pomfrey would have had to say to that. Percy could hear the clucking now…

…Just like he could hear Penelope's soft laughter, pointing out whenever he exaggerated or blew things out of proportion in grand melodramatic fashion (_He'd started to do it around her on purpose, just to hear her laugh. He loved hearing her laugh so much. Would he ever see it again?_). Would she laugh at him for equating the state she was in with death once she woke up?

If she woke up?

Percy found himself all but collapsing into the hard wooden chair near the head of the bed, all the ability to speak and reason he usually had in such abundance gone. A yawning ache opened with a lumbering groan in his chest as he tried desperately to bargain with himself.

_Penny'll be alright. You heard Madam Pomfrey, she's only sleeping—even if she's cold… cold as ice and sleep's like death. And you know the Mandrake draught will be ready in no time. Everything's going to be fine. Penny's going to be fine. She'll be up and about and laughing at you for getting like this in not time, just you wait._

Bracing thoughts couldn't stop the shake of his hands. They couldn't soothe the sore, desperate arrhythmia of his heart, or force some color back into Percy's pallid—_nearly as pale as hers_—face. His mind, Percy supposed, could delude itself all it liked. He was still deathly afraid, still numb with shock and cold from head to toe.

Her eyes were open. That was the worst. Penelope's brown eyes were open, and it was _so, so awful_—like she was staring into nothing or waiting for him to look at her and say "Hello" even though she couldn't speak. There was a look of surprise frozen on her face. It seemed almost grotesque, as though this was some sort of gruesome play and Penelope would jump up from the bed and shout "Surprise!" at any moment. Percy couldn't believe how much he wished she would do that. But he knew she wouldn't.

Penelope's open eyes were why Percy couldn't bring himself to believe what Madam Pomfrey said about her just being asleep; Penelope didn't _look_ like she was sleeping. A sleeper's eyes were supposed to be shut, their features relaxed. A sleeper's back wasn't supposed to be rigid.

A sleeper's skin wasn't supposed to be so cold.

-0-

Predictably, Madam Pomfrey came by when the fifteen minutes were up and matter-of-factly shooed Percy from the Infirmary as though he was a bat—_he expected her to swat him away with a broom_.

The Common Room was packed with whisperers and frightened Gryffindors, and Percy just did what he could to avoid walking into anyone and having to talk to anyone. He sank into an arm chair as though the bones from his legs vanished—and it felt as though they had.

Oliver Wood wasn't there; Oliver, Percy could suspect with reasonable certainty, was up in their dormitory brooding over the fact that Quidditch had been cancelled. He probably hadn't even _noticed_ that Hermione and Penelope had been Petrified, except that the attack on them was what had caused the cancellation of the match. Hopefully he'd be asleep when Percy went up.

"_Percy's in shock." _The remark somehow carried clearly across the Common Room. _"That Ravenclaw girl—Penelope Clearwater—she's a prefect. I don't think he thought the monster would dare attack a _prefect."

The Twins.

Percy could feel Ginny staring, white-lipped at him, just like he could feel the twins' derisive smiles and their shaking heads—they'd found another reason to scorn their elder brother. And if he had been able to rouse himself even slightly, he would have hexed George—the speaker—and Fred—for good measure—to high Heaven for the first time in his life.

But somehow, Percy couldn't shake off the feeling that he was turned to stone himself, unable to move an inch or speak.

He felt flimsy and useless, as thin as paper and ready to fall apart at the slightest wind or touch of water. A flame would fell him, a flood would kill him, and Percy was both sitting close to a fire and dangerously close to tears.

The thought occurred to him for the first time. _Why did it have to be her?_ Why Penelope, sharp, witty, laughing Penelope? Why should it be her cast to stone like the others, like Hermione and Colin and Justin and the rest?

The effort of keeping that shocked façade up was too much. It took too much from him to be paper, pale and stationary. So Percy left, went up to the Dormitory, murmuring that he was tired and was going to get some sleep—no one listened, and he hadn't expected them to listen.

When Percy slipped on to the mattress, sick, hot tears running down his face, it felt as hard as rock as he remembered what he'd seen in the infirmary.

Penelope was a sleeper, her mind dormant and her body numb. There was a chance she would always be a sleeper now, dreaming her dark and fantastical dreams and deaf to the outside world. If Percy let himself close his eyes, would he become like that, rigid and sleeping even though his eyes were open? Would he dream dark dreams? Or would he just turn to paper for the rest of time, and have to be put in a case somewhere?

Somehow, Percy didn't like the thought.

But eventually, his body and his mind both betrayed him and he fell to sleep.

-0-

_It was dark when Percy woke to cold sweats and Oliver's discomfited snores. He was bolt upright, sweating and gasping and telling himself things upon things—that he wasn't a sleeper and he wasn't paper and Penelope wasn't stone and she wasn't Death's bride…_

_Percy thought he heard someone laughing at him._

"_Penny?"_

_There was no one there._


End file.
